• Appearances at a number of book festivals throughout the year, with Bragg speaking about his much-acclaimed polemic, ‘The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging’, published in 2006. Billy used the publication of the paperback version as an opportunity to speak out against the rise of racism in Britain. Indeed, in April 2006 Bragg embarked on the Hope Not Hate tour, a special series of concerts in support of the UK’s leading anti-Fascist organizations.
  
• The commission to write a new English lyric for ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Bragg’s new version was unveiled at the South Bank Overture Festival on Sunday 10th June 2007 as the culmination of the re-opening of London’s Royal Festival Hall. It was performed by 1500 amateur choristers accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. Bragg’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was repeated in front of the Queen on Wednesday 10th October
  
• Q magazine’s prestigious ‘Classic Songwriter’ award, presented to him by KT Tunstall at the Q Awards on Monday 8th October. In her presentation speech, Tunstall said: “I wish Billy was my history teacher or older brother!”
  
• A duet with KT Tunstall at the Talking Bob Dylan Blues tribute concert last September. The show, recorded for a BBC TV special at London’s Barbican, was also compered by Billy, who performed ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ with Tunstall

‘Mr. Love & Justice’, the new album by the great English songwriter and performer Billy Bragg, is in Irish stores on 7th March 2008 - exactly six years since the release of his last album, ‘England, Half English’.

The 12-track new album has been produced by Grant Showbiz and features Bragg’s band The Blokes, comprising the celebrated Ian McLagan - of Small Faces, Bob Dylan, The Faces and Rolling Stones fame - on Hammond organ and piano, together with Ben Mandelson (lap steel guitar and bouzouki); Lu Edmonds (electric guitar and vocals); Martyn Barker (drums) and Simon Edwards (bass).

They are joined by the legendary Robert Wyatt, the guest vocalist on a track called ‘I Keep Faith’ recorded in South Thoresby, Lincolnshire. The collaboration came about when Bragg, in search of fresh rhubarb for a crumble, was in nearby Louth where he met Wyatt who lives in the town. “I hadn’t seen him since Red Wedge (the 1986 Labour Party youth vote initiative),” says Bragg. “He found me some rhubarb and then came along to the recording session and sang beautiful vocals to the chorus of ‘I Keep Faith’ – it was like angels singing!”

Full track listing for ‘Mr. Love & Justice’ is:

I Keep Faith
I Almost Killed You
M For Me
The Beach is Free
Sing Their Souls Back Home
You Make Me Brave
Something Happened
Mr. Love & Justice
If You Ever Leave
O Freedom
The Johnny Carcinogenic Show
Farm Boy

The album is preceded by Bragg’s special guest appearance with Kate Nash at London’s Union Chapel last November. The show was in aid of the Mencap charity. This was the second time Bragg has appeared with Nash - they shared a stage at London’s Electric Ballroom earlier in 2007.

Nash later told the NME: "When I watched him at the Electric Ballroom it was the best thing ever, to see him, one guy, one guitar and for him to have such an effect on such a huge amount of people. Everyone was smiling and singing along. It’s about connecting with people."

Bragg also celebrated his 50th birthday at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday 9th December when, in conversation with Jude Kelly, artistic director of the South Bank Centre, he discussed the political and musical influences that have shaped his life. The event brought to an end a memorable 25th anniversary - Billy Bragg’s first solo gig was opening for the Sensible Jerseys at the North London Polytechnic Sociology Department annual disco 25 years ago in March 1982.

In addition to recording the new album, Bragg’s anniversary year has been highlighted with a number of key initiatives, events, awards and performances including:

the creation of ‘Jail Guitar Doors’ which aims to buy instruments as part of the rehabilitation process for prisoners in UK jails. The initiative hit the headlines in July 2007 when Mick Jones, the esteemed guitarist and co-founder of The Clash, joined Billy for a gig at Wormwood Scrubs prison in West London. The Enemy – recently voted Best New Act in the 2007 Q Awards – are also contributing their services to Jail Guitar Doors. Says Tom Clarke, the band’s vocalist and guitarist: “I’m with Billy Bragg’s thing. It really helps with rehabilitation, you know. Eighty per cent of prisoners who go through this scheme don’t re-offend. Fact.” For more information, see www.jailguitardoors.org.uk.

• Appearances at a number of book festivals throughout the year, with Bragg speaking about his much-acclaimed polemic, ‘The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging’, published in 2006. Billy used the publication of the paperback version as an opportunity to speak out against the rise of racism in Britain. Indeed, in April 2006 Bragg embarked on the Hope Not Hate tour, a special series of concerts in support of the UK’s leading anti-Fascist organizations.
• The commission to write a new English lyric for ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Bragg’s new version was unveiled at the South Bank Overture Festival on Sunday 10th June 2007 as the culmination of the re-opening of London’s Royal Festival Hall. It was performed by 1500 amateur choristers accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. Bragg’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was repeated in front of the Queen on Wednesday 10th October
• Q magazine’s prestigious ‘Classic Songwriter’ award, presented to him by KT Tunstall at the Q Awards on Monday 8th October. In her presentation speech, Tunstall said: “I wish Billy was my history teacher or older brother!”
• A duet with KT Tunstall at the Talking Bob Dylan Blues tribute concert last September. The show, recorded for a BBC TV special at London’s Barbican, was also compered by Billy, who performed ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ with Tunstall

Since the release of his previous album, ‘England, Half English’ (on 4th March 2002), Bragg has also chronicled his entire career with two box sets released in the spring and autumn of 2006. They contained all of Bragg’s studio albums together with EPs, singles, B-sides, covers and rare outtakes as well as DVDs of UK television’s South Bank Show and concert footage from Billy’s shows in communist Eastern Europe during the late-80s – places where very few Western musicians played at that time.

Bragg has also been discovered by a new generation of musicians. The Nationwide Mercury Prize-shortlisted Hard-Fi, for instance, invited Billy to support them for six nights at London’s Brixton Academy in May 2006. The band later covered Bragg’s ‘Levi Stubbs’ Tears’ for a BBC Radio One session.

Jamie T – another artist shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Nationwide Mercury Prize – recorded a version of Bragg’s ‘A New England’ for a recent B-side while Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, the new band led by Sam Duckworth, asked Billy to support them at a gig in London’s Wandsworth Prison. Bragg has now also performed on the band’s forthcoming album.

The latest box set features eight CDs and one DVD with a wealth of rare and previously unreleased tracks – all four albums will be also available as individual releases on the same day.

The box set comprises:

1. ‘Workers Playtime’ – Billy’s fourth album originally released in 1988, together with a bonus CD featuring 12 extra tracks. ‘Workers Playtime’ is also separately released as a two-CD set

2. ‘Don’t Try This at Home’ – the original 1991 album and a bonus CD with 14 additional tracks. The album is also separately available as a two-CD set

3. ‘William Bloke’ – Bragg’s 1996 album plus 11 extra tracks on a bonus CD. ‘William Bloke’ is also separately released as a two-CD set

4. ‘England, Half English’ – Billy’s 2002 release and a bonus CD containing 13 extra tracks. The album is also separately available as a two-disc set

5. ‘If You’ve Got a Guestlist …’ – an in-concert DVD featuring Billy Bragg & The Red Stars at London’s Town & Country Club in 1991 plus Billy Bragg at the Broadway Barking, the singer’s hometown show on his Hope Not Hate anti-fascist tour in May 2006

While the four albums featured in ‘Billy Bragg Volume 1’ concentrated on the first decade of Bragg’s career, ‘Volume 2’ takes up the story with the release of his fourth album, ‘Workers Playtime’, in September 1988. More focused on matters of the heart than political issues, the album also saw Bragg move away from the sparse arrangements that had characterised his earlier work. The public approved – the album was a Top 20 hit in the UK.

In 1991Bragg issued the critically acclaimed ‘Don’t Try This at Home’, which reached number eight in the UK chart. With musical contributions from such stellar talents as Johnny Marr and, from REM, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe, the album ranged in themes from personal tragedies to a strident condemnation of racists and football hooligans. Among the songs was the hit single, ‘Sexuality’.

A long time was to elapse before Billy Bragg made another album. One of the reasons for his absence was fatherhood – Bragg took time out to concentrate on his family. When he did return, in 1996, the resulting ‘William Bloke’ album showed Bragg balancing his political and personal commitments, an unsentimental examination of his life and values.

The album also marked a return to the stripped-down Bragg, often no more than Billy and his guitar. ‘William Bloke’, a Top 20 UK hit, was to be the last album of Bragg’s own songs in the Nineties.

Before the end of the decade, however, he had returned to road fronting Billy Bragg & The Blokes in a 1999 UK tour. Among the band members was the legendary Ian McLagan, the keyboards player with the Small Faces and its later Rod Stewart incarnation, The Faces.

The tour worked so well it was inevitable that The Blokes would be a permanent band, playing with Bragg in the U.S. and Europe. The Blokes also worked with Bragg when he returned to the recording studio for his first album of the new millennium, ‘England, Half English’. The album, which explored Bragg’s notions about identity and Englishness, was released on Monday 4th March, 2002 – by sheer coincidence the precise 20th anniversary of Bragg’s first-ever solo gig, the Sociology Disco at North London Polytechnic on 4th March 1982.

The themes that pervade ‘England, Half English’ have been further amplified in ‘The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging’, Bragg’s first book, which is published by Bantam Press on Monday 9th October, the same day ‘Billy Bragg Volume 2’ is released. ‘The Progressive Patriot’ is part autobiography and part polemic on the meaning of national identity in modern Britain.

::: All four albums will be also available as individual releases on the same day :::

‘Billy Bragg Volume 1’ chronicles Bragg’s extraordinary contribution to the political and cultural ferment of the Eighties. Balancing his earthy love songs with the enduring tradition of such leftist troubadours as Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs and Woody Guthrie, Bragg - armed only with a cheap electric guitar – emerged as a completely compelling and totally convincing one-man punk-folk activist.

Bragg was born in December 1957. He was thus 19-years-old when, in 1977, punk made its indelible contribution to English popular culture. Bragg’s own particular contribution was to form a band called Riff Raff. True cultural significance, however, was to escape Riff Raff, who eventually split in 1981. Perhaps remarkably, given Bragg’s punk antecedents, he briefly joined a tank regiment of the British Army before buying his way out with what he later described as the most wisely spent £175 of his life.

Between time working in a record store, and absorbing his newfound love of blues and politically inspired folk music, Bragg launched himself on a solo musical career. Armed with a guitar, amplifier and voice, he undertook a maverick tour of the concert halls and clubs of Britain, ready at a moment’s notice to fill in as support for almost any act.

His songs were full of passion, anger and wit, a ‘one man Clash’. This was not, however, what the major record companies wanted at the time – the punk attitudes of the late-Seventies had long since given way to the escapist rise of the New Romantics. Bragg, however, finally managed to grab some studio time, courtesy of the Charisma label’s indie subsidiary, Utility. The result was ‘Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy’ (1983) which, when eventually reissued as the first album on the new Go! Discs label, hit the UK Top 30 in early 1984.

Bragg’s stark musical backdrop – for the most part a roughly strummed electric guitar – and even starker vocals belied a keen sense of melody and passionate, deeply humane lyrics. The album’s opening track, ‘The Milkman of Human Kindness’, for instance, was a love song of the most compassionate variety, illustrating the very real humanist approach that informs his music. It was an early indicator that Bragg’s work would be infused with genuine insight and humour, as well as a sustained and personal commitment to political and humanitarian issues.

After seeing how the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was changing the fabric of British society, particularly with the decimation of the mining communities, Bragg’s songs became more overtly political. He became a fixture at political rallies and benefits, particularly during the 1984 Miners Strike. Indeed, his second album, ‘Brewing Up with Billy Bragg’ (1984), opened with the fierce ‘It Says Here’, a strident song of political solidarity.

The album went Top 20 in the UK. Bragg was on something of a roll and even had a Top 20 hit with the ‘Between the Wars’ EP (included as bonus tracks on ‘Volume 1’), the title track of which he played live on BBC’s Top of the Pops – something virtually unprecedented in those days of miming on television.

Billy also toured extensively abroad, becoming one of the very few Western artists to play in such countries as East Germany, Lithuania in the then-USSR and Nicaragua – historic concerts that are highlighted on the DVDs included in the ‘Volume 1’ boxed set.

At home in the UK, much of Bragg’s time was occupied with Red Wedge - an initiative to persuade young people to vote Labour in the 1987 General Election – for which he toured with such luminaries as The Style Council, Madness, The Communards and Morrissey. His credentials as a songwriter, however, were confirmed when Kirsty MacColl released her classic version of Bragg’s ‘A New England’ (a song he originally recorded on ‘Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy’), which became a UK Top 10 hit in 1985.

Bragg’s third album, ‘Talking with the Taxman About Poetry’, was released in September 1986. It was his most successful and accomplished release to date – a Top 10 UK album spawning a hit single, ‘Levi Stubb’s Tears’, as well as ‘Greetings to the New Brunette’, a collaboration with The Smiths’ guitarist, Johnny Marr.

Bragg entered the Nineties with his most political work to date. ‘The Internationale’, released in May 1990, included such tracks as ‘The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions’, ‘Nicaragua Nicaraguita’ and Bragg’s very personal rendition of the William Blake poem, ‘Jerusalem’ as well as the Socialist anthems, ‘The Red Flag’ and the title track, ‘The Internationale’.

Long since unavailable, ‘The Internationale’ is now restored and reissued on ‘Volume 1’ where the album’s seven original tracks are now complemented by the strident politics of Bragg’s ‘Live & Dubious’ EP and his versions of such songs as the Woody Guthrie epic, ‘This Land is Your Land’, Phil Ochs’ ‘Joe Hill’ and the Sam Cooke soul classic, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’.

‘Billy Bragg Volume 1’ will be followed by a further boxed set chronicling his career through the Nineties and into the current decade.

Billy Bragg

Hope Not Hate tour includes Dublin's Vicar Street June 3rd

Billy Bragg embarks on the HOPE NOT HATE tour next April through June 2006, a special series of concerts in support of three of the UK’s leading anti-Fascist organizations -- Unite, Love Music Hate Racism and Searchlight -- in the lead-up to the important May local council elections. The Tour includes a one-off Irish Show in Dublin's Vicar Street June 3rd.

Billy will be playing with the Small Faces’ keyboards legend Ian McLagan and supported by Seth Lakeman, whose ‘Kitty Jay’ album was shortlisted for the 2005 Nationwide Mercury Prize.

The Hope Not Hate tour is sponsored by four of the UK's major trade unions -- Amicus, the GMB, the RMT and UNISON. Says Billy: “In my home town, Barking, we've organised and begun to turn the tide on the BNP. It couldn't have been done without the support of the unions. If you want to know what trade unions are all about, it's not just what happens in the workplace, it's about building communities -- communities where people can live side by side in peace and prosperity. That's why I'm so pleased that Amicus, the GMB, UNISON and the RMT are supporting this tour and helping us take the Hope Not Hate message out on the road."

The tour follows Billy’s appearance at Which Side Are You On?, a show he curates and hosts at the Barbican in London on Thursday 2nd February. The show focuses on songs of social engagement, from the folk protests of the Fifties and Sixties through to the righteous anger of the punk, rock and ska of the Seventies, Eighties and beyond. The show in produced by the Barbican in association with BBC Four. Tickets cost £25.00, £20.00 and £15.00.